We’re looking to put together some more detailed rules on what should and should not be submitted to the instance. Things such as, but not exclusively:
- What types of message you would always like to see removed on sight
- Whether there are any types of message which should be left up (borderline, with strong corrections from the community)
- Where the line is drawn on political views (and how gray areas should be treated)
I’ll make no bones: Moderating uk/ukpol has been a learning experience for me.
I’ve learned that there often isn’t much difference between “leaving a comment up because the community has done an excellent job highlighting flaws” and “I should have removed this hours ago, the community shouldn’t have to do this”.
As there isn’t a way to mod-tag a post, inaction on negative posts can reflect badly on the instance as a whole.
Having some clear guidelines/rules will hopefully simplify things.
And more admins should mean that if a report isn’t looked at, someone can review it as an escalation.
I’ve also enabled the slur filters. And we’ll be listening to see if anything needs adding/removing (the template had swearing blocked :| )
So…Answers on a postcard, I guess!
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alright, since i’m first up to comment, i’ll start with an easy one
tiananmen square massacre denial should probably be banned or removed on sight.
i’m making this suggestion because there is a… particular… audience and demographic in the fediverse that for some reason, has issues with accepting this. i will not name this audience, because this same audience also likes to brigade posters that dare to stick their head up above the trenches and point out that actually, some of their takes might be verifiably wrong. i hope that not naming them reduces my chance of being detected, and then drawing targeted fire. one of us had to be the person to point it out, so i guess it’s my turn.
by all means, debate casualty figures, sure. debate why there were protests, sure, that’s not the thing i have issue. but if a poster is trying to sincerely argue that
nothing happened, in my opinion, it’s a strong indiciation that the poster is acting in bad faithhow to implement this as a rule? maybe i would go with “no denial of historically verified massacres”? it sounds obvious really, but if you don’t spell it out, people can and will say “ahh but the mods didn’t say i can’t! 🥴”
i dunno how you want to go about it exactly, but yeah.
I’m sure we all know which instance (or instances, there’s two that stick to mind) you’re talking about! Their takes are usually crazy and extreme and their behaviour (it’s usually the one of the two that are more problematic) is annoying as fuck.
That said, it sounds like we want to censor people who are arguing in bad faith? I think this might be broad enough, but I worry that people might get banned or content censored when they raise something that is deeply against the commonly held view a the time but later turns out to be correct.
Personally I think we should just downvote people who express these “opinions”, as long as they’re not being offensive. The more rules there are the more work the mods have to do, but they can also open up the possibility of mods banning people they disagree with under the guise of that rule.
Yeah, I have to agree with this. If I don’t know much about a post’s topic and read a comment that could be arguing in bad faith, it’s usually a good indicator if it has lots of down votes.
In my experience, if bad actors have a specific agenda to push they usually hang around in groups of likeminded people and search for specific discussions, posts, subjects, etc to push their agenda in. This can often results in a toxic / bad faith comment being one of, if not the most highly upvoted comments (due to brigading). Most people that take the middle ground on a topic rarely have the energy to fight against a dog pile of downvotes and bad actors. Automatically assuming that bad actors are single outliers operating by themselves is a bad position that IMHO leads to “too little, too late” moderation reactions after the damage is done and the post has turned toxic.
This is a very complex topic, and not one I believe can be solved by just letting the voting system work it out. I don’t know the right answer, it’s one I’ve been searching for, for years. But the assumption of “good faith, until proven otherwise” in conjunction with “it’s only a few bad actors” is specifically the mentality the bad actors are exploiting. IMHO, YMMV, IANAL, etc…
I’ve seen this mentioned over the years, I’ve just never experienced it. I’d like to ask you about it because I’m fairly certain I would know if I had. Please bear with me, I’m not trying to be antagonistic.
if bad actors have a specific agenda to push
If it’s an agenda that goes against what people generally think, don’t they get down voted?
they usually hang around in groups of likeminded people and search for specific discussions, posts, subjects, etc to push their agenda in.
That sounds like their own communities? Those are easy to spot and back away from. If it’s just a group of individuals whose agenda goes against the grain, those “discussions, posts, subjects” are either controversial to begin with or they aren’t of enough significance to make a difference anyway. Where it matters, wouldn’t they be overwhelmingly down voted?
a toxic / bad faith comment being one of, if not the most highly upvoted comments (due to brigading).
I’m not aware of having seen this when it hasn’t been dealt with be mods/admins, usually by locking the post or deleting the comment and with bans. Where you see damage being done through the post having quickly turned toxic, I see the moderation that follows as a red flag.
Maybe I’m thick skinned and cynical enough that it’s obvious to me and I just ignore it and move on? It’s also possible that the places I frequent aren’t targets for the bad actors you describe?
Any thoughts on this would be very much appreciated as I’m trying to keep up with the modern world and I need all the help I can get.
I’ve been at the thick end of this fight for over a decade (on reddit). The vast majority of the work I and my co-mods do is never seen by anyone outside the mod team.
If it’s an agenda that goes against what people generally think, don’t they get down voted?
It depends. Very few are stupid enough to say anything that’s obviously bad. Most use dog whistles and innuendo. And when they do speak plainly, there’s an army of their likeminded friends to drown out any descenting voices (brigading) and inflate their (and similar) comments.
That sounds like their own communities? Those are easy to spot and back away from. If it’s just a group of individuals whose agenda goes against the grain, those “discussions, posts, subjects” are either controversial to begin with or they aren’t of enough significance to make a difference anyway. Where it matters, wouldn’t they be overwhelmingly down voted?
Yes, bad actors can have their own community. No, you don’t want to go there. Did you ever see /r/MGTOW, or /r/PussyPassDenied? Mysogony is rife, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, racism, etc, etc are all more common than they used to be 5-10 years ago.
I’m not aware of having seen this when it hasn’t been dealt with be mods/admins, usually by locking the post or deleting the comment and with bans. Where you see damage being done through the post having quickly turned toxic, I see the moderation that follows as a red flag.
If a mod is any good, and knows the group the bad actors are from, then the majority of the work is done behind closed doors (automod for dog whistles and known phrases, etc).
Bans are seen as a “badge of honor” by most of these people since it’s so easy to create a new account. They can also wait to appealed after 3 months since that’s how far back the moderation log goes (on reddit), so unless you’ve kept notes and evidence it’s easy for them to play the fool and say they’ve “turned over a new leaf”.
This doesn’t even touch on suspected state actors / state run bot accounts. Several UK regional subreddits saw a wave of anti-Ukranian posts (false news reports about robbery, attacks, theft, etc by refugees) in an attempt to destabilise the UK’s support for Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion.
Or the “bad news” accounts that just go from regional subreddit to subreddit posting (legitimate) news stories about bad things. Rape, murder, assault. Anything that can stir up some rage. They never comment, and post at all hours of the day, every day of the week.
Thanks for the reply. As I said, I think I may have very strong filter. I know these things exist, I just seem to be able to avoid and ignore them.
I’ve rarely ventured outside of my own communities other than to be curious and always found what I suspected was there, on both Reddit and Lemmy, and that’s probably why I’m not subjected to it as well.
I must add that I am aware of generally how much good work the mods do and I’m using that to enable my experience to be a good one.
Thanks for the chat, it’s helped me to evaluate things again. A self reflection of sorts.
I think this can be covered by the “no intentionally inflammatory comments/posts” rule that u/flamingos proposed.
If someone is outright denying facts then they should just be downvoted, reported for trolling, and ignored.
I don’t engage with the communities you’re referencing so it may be things are worse than I’m aware - but the argument I’ve seen from more prominent members of the communities is that we shouldn’t trust everything provided by the CIA as it is in their interest to demonise enemy states.
I believe that’s a different opinion from outright denial of historic events so shouldn’t be censored.
I can’t imagine why these topics would be coming up in UK communities though so hopefully this is an entirely non issue and can be moderated on a community by community basis rather than instance wide.
As much as I like the idea of a trolling report function, it is a very subjective thing to introduce. Some people fall foul of believing the propaganda of their own country, and penalising them for living in a state that does this should not be a thing in my opinion. Ideally you should be convincing people of the truth with irrefutable evidence of the facts.
Key thing I think is no transphobia (or racism against GRT) For some reason they are the two things that still seem acceptable in UK online spaces and it’s just depressing.
It depends on your definition of transphobia. If your definition of transphobia is hateful comments against trans people, then yeah, sure. If it includes people who want to debate the climate, such as bathroom issues, pronoun discussions etc, then no. That’s just censorship and not allowing debate.
Same with GRT, actual racism against them, sure, ban it. But that shouldn’t be used as an excuse to stifle discussion around real issues. If a GRT community are illegally camping on land, then that’s a crime and it’s not racist to point it out.
Like everything in life, it’s nuanced.
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This is going to sound annoyingly vague, but I’d like to see some kind of rule on inflammatory comments/posts. By inflammatory, I mean they don’t add to the discussion, but are just there to rile people up. An example would be this from the recent Rowling thread.
I’m not saying that these should be removed on sight, but if this is all a user does then they should probably be banned.
Hard to be black and white about it but I think you have to be transparent about whatever you do, i.e. offer a proper reason for every ban or run the risk of becoming the cliché power-tripping Reddit mod.
Also I’m always hesitant about any auto-word-filtering, it tends to treat users a bit like children. Trolls who really want to use slurs will find a way around them, and sometimes you want to refer to a particular word without having to asterisk it out like you’re afraid of the internet police. You can refer to a bad word without invoking its meaning, we’re all grown-ups here. That said I have no idea how easy that is to enforce, might be a lot less effort all round to just auto-remove the slurs!
Honestly, people here are pretty good at not using the worst slurs, it’s mostly a word that refers to mental disability that gets used, with people sometimes not understanding that it’s not really acceptable for use an insult nowadays.
I think if filters are used, it would be words where there are generally good alternatives in technical uses (there are very few situations where “slow” or “delay” are not valid alternatives, for example).
I’d throw another one in for being against word filters. I think it’s condescending, and ultimately words are really only bad in context. What if I want to quote someone who used the word? Or what about if a bread making community takes off, where the word is pretty appropriate.
Certainly it’s acceptable to remove posts, etc, when some words are used in certain ways, but I think this should be left to the discretion of the moderators.
Ultimately, anyone here who wants to ignore the rules and use those words will get around the filters anyway.
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The slur filter I have enabled is one I pinched from somewhere else, but with a lot of things removed.
General swearing is allowed through, directed slurs are supposed to be caught by the regex.I still have no idea if it’s working, mind you, or even how it actions when it detects something.
I added the word “banana” in hopes that it might help us work it out :Dbanana banana. stop being such a banana
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Outside of what is genuinely illegal I think it is better that speech considered to be objectionable by the community remains visible so that our collective attitude towards those things are also visible. What I mean is I would rather see bigots hounded and debated than just banned… I don’t think defaulting to the ban hammer is the way outside of specific safe spaces.
I appreciate the input. I’ll be honest, bigots getting hounded is my preference too.
But a couple of times, I’ve been hounded for not deleting the bigot posts. That’s one of the reasons I was keen to get feedback, to find out what people would prefer.
As if most of the feddit.uk members are keen for that, it’ll become policy.I wish I could say I was surprised… I think there’s a need for online spaces where bigotry is just absolutely not tolerated, but I’m not sure every space should become one.
Absolutely second this.
Let’s not throw blanket bans out and create an echo chamber whilst stifling discussion.
Those who break the spirit of the rules will be called out, downvoted, and argued with. This isn’t a bad thing. Serial offenders will be apparent and can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, with warnings and bans.I say this as an admin of another large instance, having to deal this this myself.
I think we should only really step in when people are being flat-out hateful, like actual nazi type crap
Do not antagonise other instances/communities
I’m proposing this because a lot of the drama within Lemmy has been caused by the diversity of different communities. Personally I’d like the option to see the entire federated universe, but if members of this instance act inappropriately in another instance it seems to all too quickly lead to defederation.
Personally hate speech should not be allowed. By hate speech I mean anything that promotes discrimination, hostility, or violence towards individuals or groups. I’m sure someone can word it better.
Also we should naturally not allow breaking of the law. No, i don’t mean Piracy which is debatable, but clear cut things like discussions related to say cases that are currently in court.
Everything else is fair game. even though i may disagree with it. The community through vote based regulation will need to manage the rest.
Discussion of current court cases is not illegal - unless that discussion would be prejudicial to the outcome as I understand it, and if we are going to prohibit any discussion of them, I think that is a fairly crucial distinction. I really don’t think that we should be imposing blanket bans on any discussion.
It’s often a fine line between discussing the case, and people making statements like “X was bothering underage people off-stage at Z”
Yes, but then do we really want to ban comments along the line of 'did you hear what the judge said today in that case where climate protesters are taking the government to court?".
Surely we can be nuanced enough to avoid the one without banning the other?
Things like this are why I was keen to make this post. I’d like to have lots of community opinions before drafting up guidelines.
And hopefully those guidelines (maybe with a few examples) would be enough to keep people on the right side of things.
That’s getting into libel territory and it is tricky as we may be expected to keep the evidence for prosecution.
There’s also injunctions and super-injunctions, which are difficult to police as, by their nature, we don’t know what they are about.
In all such cases, probably be guided by what the papers report as they’ll have run it past their lawyers. You’d hope.
Your comment on papers is a good one. I’ve always liked rules like “would you say it to your grandma” or “would you publish this with your full name on the article”. (Not exactly like that, but you get my drift)
what about drugs? what about drugs that are only illegal in some places like marijuana and alcohol?
I think we need to dissect that legal line a little more.
Or speeding… Would you be banished for discussing driving at 21 mph in the new Welsh 20 mph zones?
Promotes discrimination where? Just say if someone was participating in a religion-based discussion about certain gender roles in religious institutions, wouldn’t that be much different than someone saying “women should be banned from driving”?
Illegal stuff should be a hard rule. By that I mean calls to action and explicit hate speech should be aggressively removed. It puts the instance at risk.
Auto-filtering might be useful for catching especially egregious words. They’re easy to bypass but I guess it should deter some trolling. But it could be tedious if it is overly sensitive. Is it going to block people posting or commenting? Does it let you know you’ve been caught?
I’m really not sure how well policing “political” topics would go. It’s political by nature, so I think even coming up with rules will end up devolving into political discussion. It’s probably easier to just say “no hate speech”.
I’m not a political guy. Back on Reddit I only subscribed to casualuk because ukpol and unitedkingdom were way too negative for me.
The main things I like to talk about are nerdy stuff like programming, science etc. In terms of political subjects and things like that, the main thing I dislike is stuff that is superficial, inaccurate, lacks nuance or is deliberately intellectually disingenuous.
Basically, I am here to read high-quality, thoughtful, and ideally, respectful content. Regardless of its political leaning. If someone wants to write about the merits of anarchism or fascism or communism or anything, I’ll give it a read, as long as it’s respectful and put forward in good faith (i.e. because the person really believes what they are saying and not trying to manipulate people or twist facts to suit their political opinions).
Here’s an example of the type of content I don’t like: there was a post the other day about JK Rowling which I would usually have just skipped past because there are never going to be any meaningful comments in there, it’s just going to be full of people either attacking her or attacking the people attacking her - which doesn’t make for a very constructive, positive or pleasant place to spend your virtual downtime.
Nevertheless, I clicked into the comments and there was a comment in there basically talking about all the “problems” with the Harry Potter books. As with a lot of books, there were some cringy things that I was nodding along to, but the one that stood out for me was the unironic claim that JK Rowling supported slavery (and supported slaves working naked) because in the books that’s what house elves have to do. And this comment had quite a lot of upvotes.
Up until that point in the comment, the rest of the points were reasonable enough, but this was just so stupid, like, it’s so obvious an author can write about things without necessarily advocating them. And if you read the comment it’s just so obvious that the person in question wanted as much fuel for the fire as possible so they just threw that in too. And suddenly, I’m not reading a comment with intellectual integrity anymore, I’m reading someone who is clearly trying to make a point, even at the expense of honest, reasonable debate.
The fact that it had so many upvotes instantly told me I was in an echo chamber. Someone should have jumped in and challenged that last point saying “That’s not a great take” but I’ve been on sites like Reddit long enough to know that I would probably have been downvoted just for appearing to be a force that wasn’t 100% aligned with the “correct” narrative (which is ridiculous as challenging a bad point does not equal supporting JK Rowling who I literally could not give two figs about).
So, winding back to the original question: My concern is that if we start introducing any “banned subjects” or opinions, we’re focusing on the wrong thing, as even within ostensibly “acceptable” subjects, the environment can still feel a bit unwelcoming, hard to participate meaningfully in or 1-dimensional.
My suggestion would be to define quality comments/contributions as ones that:
- Focus on the subject, not the person
- Contribute to the discussion (which can include respectfully disagreeing or challenging the subject)
- Are respectful and polite; don’t attack individuals or groups of people
Here’s an example on one of the most divisive topics I can think of (eek - apologies if I get something wrong here, as I said I’m not a very politically aware person): discussion of trans stuff - what should be tolerated?
Well, applying the above, anything that attacked or insulted trans people directly would be objectionable content. However, let’s say some big new law came out that was very pro-trans, or even better, because I’m much more familiar with this subject: let’s take the gay marriage laws from back in the day. I don’t think it’s right to ban critical or skeptical discussions about these laws and their impacts as long as they don’t start getting hateful and calling being gay or trans ‘evil’, saying trans people don’t deserve rights… shit like that.
I remember back in the day when we were trying to get the gay marriage stuff through, there was an incredible amount of skepticism and worry, even from my own parents and other people I respect. That has died down a lot more now, and one of the ways that happened was by sitting down and talking to these people, it was about having proper, nuanced discussions in good faith. Because that’s the only way anybody grows and learns.
I remember what it was like to be in my 20s. I wanted everyone to agree with me too, I don’t know why, but getting older seems to make you less fervent on that front, maybe because you become very comfortable with understanding your own opinions so you don’t constantly need to reinforce them - or maybe, it’s the opposite and you realise you’re just as wrong about most things as everyone else. It’s so funny because as I type this, I remember hearing older people in my own life saying similar things and being like “ugh, just have some strong opinions”. Who knows… maybe echo chambers/heavily “curated” environments are important for helping younger people consolidate their thoughts and feelings. This is just my 10 cents.
So that’s my little essay. Let’s be kind, but let’s be resilient too, and not shy away from nuance or challenging opinions if possible
I think if you want nuance and reason then a social network is not going to deliver for you. Social networks are about feelings and hyperbole and fuck the Tories because why not? Whilst I agree 100% with what you’re saying, this fundamental truth is not going to change.
I believe that free speech shows people’s true colours and allows you to see who to block and who to listen to.
We should listen to all opinions even if they’re wrong and stupid.
I think its better to leave something up even if its offensive so long as its not spam.
My gut reaction is to agree with you. But at the same time I wonder if it’s far easier for me to take this stance because it’s very unlikely that I will ever be the target of any kind of abuse. I sit in a very safe position, very much in a majority in almost any way other than things I can choose. So despite my first thought being much the same as yours I can’t by election but think I should instead listen to other voices around me?
I think any rule put in place will be challenged by people hoping to spread hate speech so there should be a degree of leeway with the context of something. In a similar vein I’m against outright banning certain words but instead banning particular uses.
Regarding word bans, I’m trying to find out if the filter blocks the comments, or just puts a mod review in.
In fact, I’ll test it in here. banana is now on the list, lets see what happens.
Edit: Odd, nothing happened. Much to think about.We should definitely ban your “gray” spelling.
I blame Firefox defaulting me to star spangled English when it updates. The number of Zs I’ve had to spot makes me sad.
Banana. banana
Just thought I’d also test in case you have some sort of mod immunity to filters?
Time to wash your mouth out with soap!
Yea, I think it’s not working. No worries, thanks for the assist!
Scone should be pronounced scone. Scon is unacceptable.
Personally, I think only nasty personal attacks on others and actual illegal speech. I don’t like censorship, I think censoring opinions just pushes people to echo chambers. You may not agree with GC people, for instance, but deleting their comments just end up with people like Graham Linehan, stuck in their own echo chambers getting more and more extreme.
